


Me

by mizzsy



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Dark is a dick, Gen, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 13:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20098024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizzsy/pseuds/mizzsy
Summary: What the egos have come to take, he will fight for till his last breath.





	Me

When he'd seen the photo, the cold dread that had been gladly absent for a year struck down on Ben.   
Peter was still smiling, already scrolling on to the next photo in the Facebook album of their trip to New York last week. He didn't know what he'd done-Ben had done his best to ensure it.   
"Go back." he asked, voice cold and harsh that his boyfriend stiffened at the sudden change.   
"What?" He asked.   
"That last picture, go back to it."  
Peter obliged, scrolling up the screen until the damning photo was centre stage again.   
It was one of many tilted, slightly blurry shots of the New York streets. This one outside the Richard Rodgers theatre when neither of the two could contain their inner theatre nerds. It was crowded, none of the people in the street bothering to stop for the shot. You could almost miss Ben in the corner, face turned to the side and a bagel half way to his mouth.   
Almost, if you weren't looking for it.   
Peter realised immediately, face falling as he scrambled to delete the photo.   
"I'm sorry! I didn't even realise I got you in the shot" he babbled, already hitting the button to take it down. "It's gone now. It wasn't even up for too long."  
Not long for someone who just hated having their photo taken, like Ben had told Peter once things became serious. It was more than enough for, say four Androids, who could still find the data long after it had been deleted from public view.   
Peter looked at him with a small, hopeful smile, and there was no way Ben could blame him for what he'd started.   
"It's fine - just a little mistake." Ben said, pressing a kiss to Peter's forehead and trying not to think of it as a goodbye.   
It had been two years, surely they'd stopped looking by now.   
*  
Ben didn't sleep at all that night, instead watching the rise and fall of Peter's peaceful breaths and touching his skin as gently as he could.   
The rattling of the front door came around 2am,and he went down to let answer it.   
"Leave. Now."  
Ed Edgar only raised an eyebrow, barely visible between the hat and the hair, and shook his head.   
"You know I can't do that kid. Gotta do as the boss man says."  
It had been years since Ben had reached down to the belief that created him, the wisps of power and life that could be used in many different, dangerous ways depending on the month. He'd been frightened, crushing it down for so long just in case it was the trail that would bring them all to his new life.   
Too late for that now.   
His teeth ached as they slipped into their old, sharp shape and bared themselves at Ed. His eyes began to burn and the world filtered to a vivid purple as he cracked his joints, brimming with a new strength.   
"Now, B-"   
He surged forwards, pouring the years of anger and looking over his shoulder into one shove, sending Ed flying backwards in sparks of light. The older man shouted out, landing with a sickly thud. Ben had only a moment to look at his twitching form before two gentle yet strong arms clamped around his middle, and he was airborne.   
"It doesn't have to be hard." Silver Shepherd begged in his ear, only just audible over the rush of wind that popped them, "It can be better this time. Just come back with us."  
"It's already better!" Ben snarled twisting in the hero's grip, "Can't you let me have this? Just let me go!"   
"I wish I could." Silver said, with all the sincerity that was usually missing from the occupants of the Manor, "Don't make me do this."  
Their upwards ascent suddenly shifted, Silver pointing them both at a sharp angle down with Ben's head ready to take the impact. Ben pulled again on that now frothing power inside, channelling it down his hands until his fingers elongated and sharpened. The claws growing from where his first knuckle used to be and now embedded deep into Silver's arms. The hero howled, releasing his hold on Ben but finding the other now had him gripped by flesh and bone. The pair jerked around in the sky, Silver desperately trying to get away and Ben using his hold to try and steer the flight. Blood began to rain down from them, as Silver's exposed skin becoming paler and paler, and eventually all fight left him.   
They tumbled to the ground, Ben turning them so that it was Silver's back that took the fall, the snap echoing as the soft body took Ben's impact.   
He groaned, body aching from the fall and the fire that was now unfamiliar working through his blood again. He had barely come back to his feet when another body fell on him, pushing his face to the mud, and frantically tearing at his back with sharp talons. Ben's comfy pj top, the one Peter bought him, fell to pieces and began to sag with blood. He screamed, trying to move to defend himself or just pull his arms from where they were trapped beneath him but only being met with the agonising seizing of muscles all through his body.   
King didn't say anything-they must have made him feral before setting him on Ben's new home. He only continued to tear through the flesh of Ben's back with a low growl. His vision began to blur, head throbbing heavily yet full of light thoughts that disappeared like air when he tried to grasp onto what to do next.   
The purple fire knew. It glowed in his hidden hand, pressing against his heart and shot through Ben, blasting King in the face. It burned, so long hidden away that his body was no longer immune to the heat within it. It hurt King more, it seemed, as the squirrel man screeched above him and turned his claws towards his own face to rid himself of the burning in his skin.   
Ben hurried back towards the open door, languid, lumbering, heavy with pain but focused on the only goal of getting Peter away. The house, before in total darkness, was now lit up. Every, device and electronic shone out in full power, circling between blue, yellow, green and red. It blinded Bim, the haze of purple not enough to completely block out the shining light turned up to maximum. Still he stumbled forward, gripped the handrail as he pulled himself up the staircase.   
"Peter! Peter wake up, we need to go!"   
He made it halfway before the ringing began. A sharp sonic that drilled through his ears and into his aching head until his grip loosened, and Ben tumbled down the stairs, blood left on each step as he went. The noise never let up, demanding its own pain as it surrounded Ben who squirmed on the floor, hands pressed to his ears as a desperate token effort of comfort.   
It is time to come with us. It is time to come with us. It is time to come with us.  
The robotic voices of Google, four that were actually one, spoke through the rise and fall of the ringing. Endless and firm. Digging into Ben's head until it was all that he could think.   
The fire had grown into an inferno on his chest, pressing against his outline and begging for release. So he let it.   
Flames rushed out from his skin, charring every surface and melting every wire it touched. Lightbulbs shattered, the tv sank in on itself, and it became blessedly silent again.   
Ben breathed, choosing to feel the scratch of the carpet against his cheek rather than the bleeding in his back or the weight behind his eyes.   
He would get up. He could, for Peter.   
His limbs hadn't even began to process their need to move when footsteps reached his aching ears. A pair of dirty boots filled his vision, and reluctantly Ben lifted his eyes to see a bloodied trench coat on a blindfolded man.   
"The Host understands that giving another warning will not stop future events. He hopes you will listen nevertheless when he says that it is better to give up now."  
"I-can-still-run." Ben gasped out, tasting metal on his tongue as he spoke.   
The Host hummed, kneeling down and gently helping Ben to a sitting position, examining him without any eyes.   
"Any future that Peter could have had with 'Ben Smith' was impossible the moment they met. It was always too late."  
He was drawn up to his feet and turned into the living room. One impossible spotlight survived, illuminating Peter, on his knees and gagged, and behind him with a pistol waving through the air, Wilford Warfstache.   
" Heeeeere he is!" Wilford shouted, arching his weapon with his slurred words, "It's been years now, hasn't it 'Ben'? How's the family, how's the kids?"   
"Wilford, please."Ben begged, tears began to escape down his face at seeing the love he'd found despite everything at the mercy of a madman.   
" Oh don't be so blue there,this is a good thing. We're here to take you home!"  
Ben shook his head desperately.   
"I won't, I don't want to."  
Wilford frowned, gun finding its way to the side of Peter's head again and digging in to the skin.   
"Because of him? Because that's a loose end I am more than happy to get rid of."  
"Wilford Warfstache will not shoot Peter. That is not how the story ends." Host's calm voice spoke as the man came to stand beside Wilford. The room stilled, each man looking between one another as they waited for someone to move.   
"Fine. It's not like he'll stay anyway. Even if we all walked out of here now and left you to it, do you think he's ever going to forget the glimpse of the real you?"  
For the first time, Ben noticed how Peter's wide, frantic eyes were not fixed on The bloodied Host or the man holding a gun to his head.   
They were fixed, in total terror, on him.   
Ben looked to the cracked glass of the cabinet to take in his reflection. The teeth and claws that sliced their way out of his skin and left lumps of flesh dripping from them. How his skin moved and bulged as the fire stretched out his muscles to a lumping form. And his eyes, leaking fire and purple so dark they looked like black pits.   
"Did you think," Wilford said quietly, "That when you ran away from us all those years ago, you'd be able to get away from what you really are?"   
No, of course not. He had always known, from the moment Peter had talked to him in a half empty cafe and decided that he was worth loving. A scared, defensive man still trying to convince himself he could have a life of his own without the egos.   
It was a human man that Peter thought he was falling for, something Ben could never be. And what he was would replace the love in Peter's eyes with fear.   
"Bim," A dual toned voice spoke into his ear, the dark surrounding them both, "It's time to come home."  
And then Ben fell away.   
*  
When he woke up, Dr Iplier's face filled his vision, cracking in worry over a reassuring smile.   
"Hey, it's ok," he said, "You'll be OK Bim."  
"No,I won't." Bim replied, pushing himself up to a sitting position and looking around the walls of the clinic he'd never wanted to see again. "The others?"   
"Banged up. Nothing they didn't recover from with some sleep." Iplier said, "You went easy on them."  
"I shouldn't have."  
No reply came, and the men allowed the silence as Iplier began to check Bim over, eyes just on the verge of wet the entire time. Once done he sighed, pointing to the clothes folded at the end of his bed.   
"He wants you to put those on."  
Bim's chest tightened as he recognised the simple black and white-so featureless yet characteristic for him, apparently.   
He moved slowly, pulling off the remnants of his shirts, shucking off the green sweatpants, and stepped back into the skin of Bim Trimmer.   
"I get it, you know." Iplier spoke softly as Bim began tightening the knot around his neck. "I didn't want to live here. To be this. If I could have stayed in that normal life with him-" he cut himself off with a sniff. Bim remained quiet.   
"There's ways to forget, you know. It might be easier. I can talk to Host and-"   
"No."Bim said coldly, turning to face the Doctor with thunder running through his eyes."I won't let them erase what they took from me."  
The doctor stepped in close, grabbing Bim by the shoulders.   
" Bim, I know you're angry but you can't defy Dark. Not after you left. He's far more powerful than others, and he hasn't got much forgiveness left for you."  
"I'm not one to look for the forgiveness of other monsters." Bim snapped, pulling away from the Doctors grip.   
"Maybe they were right. I'm not a thing that can be loved by a normal person. That doesn't mean all I have is being Dark's lapdog."  
He turned to smile at Iplier, lips sharp and teeth shining.   
"So Doctor, while we're stuck here, are you up for a bit of mischief?"


End file.
